German Cardinal Offers Resignation Over Catholic Church’s Sex-Abuse Screw ups

Cardinal Reinhard Marx, a high adviser to Pope Francis and one in every of the strongest figures in the German Catholic Church, equipped the pope his resignation, pronouncing he was taking responsibility for the church’s institutional screw ups to prevent clerical sex abuse, his archdiocese stated on Friday.

The surprise scamper, by one in every of the leaders of the German Catholic hierarchy’s response to the sex-abuse crisis, is essentially the most neatly-liked blow to a church that has lost millions of adherents in most neatly-liked years amid revelations of abuse.

The cardinal wrote to the pope that he was asking to step down “to section the responsibility for the misfortune of the sexual abuse by church officers over the past decades.”

The crisis over sex abuse by Catholic clergy in Germany has intensified since a 2018 fable that documented thousands of cases over the old decades.

Final week, the Vatican announced that it will likely be endeavor its have investigation of the Archdiocese of Cologne, the ideal church jurisdiction in Germany. In March, Archbishop Stefan Hesse of Hamburg equipped his resignation over allegations of mishandling sex-abuse cases in his old position as an official in Cologne. The archbishop is for the time being on a scamper away of absence.